The whole world must have gone crazy (From Gazette & Herald)

The whole world must have gone crazy

QUEUING nonchalantly for a new cash card in Nationwide this week, I happened to glance up at the 50" plasma screen showing BBC News 24 with subtitles.

I rolled my eyes with the ridiculousness of them having written out this person's "likes" and "you knows", and then suddenly realised, "Hang on a moment, those words, like, sound a lot like mine."

Stepping back a bit, I could see my shining face in all its high-watted TV lighting glory, lamenting the loss of life in Asia, and it was exactly then that I discovered the world must have gone crazy.

And this assertion has since been proved to me time after time this week - relentless praising for 'surviving' my 'ordeal', continuous phone ringing, jammed full of media people sodden with sympathy for us, mixed only with a tiny bit of raw urgency to press through the exclusive rights to our story.

For what exactly? For being alive? Services to human instinct?

I can't think what it is that has aroused such media interest in our tale - after all, it's surely only one of thousands, many that are full of more blood and courage and survival in the face of adversity.

The telling and retelling of what happened to us to CNN, the BBC, The Daily Telegraph, Radio One always invites them to ask "So would you describe this as a holiday of a lifetime?"

This is met with the disappointing answer of: "Well, we usually go west."

So none of us is dying of cancer or was bullied because of weight problems or was a homeless drug addict, and it irritates them no end not to be able to fit us into their cutesy Daily Mail story box, where there was pain before, and survival after and a 'Welcome Home' hamper courtesy of which ever section of the media to complete the happy ending.

We were on Richard and Judy on Monday, sort of by accident (the accident being we had never seen the programme before we agreed to do it.)

We're the worst sort of media whores, selling our souls to tittle-tattle incarnate for ten minutes on a sofa with Richard Madeley and the chance to see Emma and Marco from Big Brother 5!

My grandmother refused outright, being a lady of pedigree only willing to appear on the Ten O'Clock News with that lovely George Alagiah, and my parents put up a feeble fight - but when all's said and mocked at, why shouldn't we go?

The TV company is donating generously to the appeal, we're not getting paid, we're not exploiting anyone's misery other than our own, and damn it, we may well get to meet some D-list celebs.

The media can pick us over for as long as they see fit, which surely won't be long now, and we can go back to school and live normally while we watch the years it takes to rebuild the lives in Asia.

Updated: 12:44 Wednesday, January 12, 2005